"You dont go to a whore's funeral. Its like eating a steak and then mourning the cow"

"As long as your still on the board Leo, you can still win the game. A pawn can become a queen in the end"

Amazing allegedly true story of a 17yr old in Italy during WW2 who becomes a mountain guide for fleeing jews and later a spy in the german army. Aurhour is a journalist and it shows good on plot driven narrative but human interaction and dialogue eh not so much. Still a cracking read. Really gives flavour to the chaos of the time.

It is turning into one of my favourite ever books and I have read a few. Its a book about life and friendship. It builds slowly into something special. In tone and feeling it reminds of reading The Shawshank Redemption. Chapter 14 had me cheering and crying simaultaneously. Rich and clever in its writing, containing many quotable truisms and metaphors. Go get a copy read it, live it. Thank me later

all thoughts, no matter how altruistic, always end up being self-centred in some way if you give them long enough,

it looks a little eccentric or at the very least as though her washing machine‘s broken and this outfit is made up of the only clean clothes she could find.

I learned that if someone tells you to be on the safe side lots of times then after a while they do not need to say it. After a while you just say it to yourself in your head like, ‘I had better not do that, just to be on the safe side.‘

sometimes I struggle to get the thoughts out of my head because they are stuck behind one another like cars in a traffic jam

Martha kisses me on the cheek too, only she does not wipe away her lipstick afterwards. When she is not looking, I touch where she put her lips. It feels sticky but in a nice way. Like she has left part of her kiss behind for me to find later tonight, when I am in bed and dropping off to sleep.

I keep quiet and she keeps quiet too, until we use up all the quiet in the room so that finally one of us has to say something.

Even thinking about working makes me feel queasy. This I know makes me sound a lot like I have no ambition. It presents me as almost having given up on life. It suggests that I‘m content to just exist like some corpulent bluebottle basking in the sunshine on the windowsill of life.

The thing about work is that it‘s a habit. If you do it enough. it sort of sticks so that you feel wrong if you‘re not doing something.

If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes.

Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

My 1st Mark Edwards book. My first ghosty/creepy book for years. Missing children, haunted houses local child abducting legends. It went full "Wicker Man!"His style is very direct. Hardly a metaphor or similie anywhere. However he makes up for it in plot. Haven't read a page turner like this for years! Always desperate to see what happens next. With more twists and turns than a whirling dervish with a corkscrew. Its a hell yes from me! ???

😯

Nice turn of phrase 😁

Historical fiction. Author suggests a different motive for the murder of Thomas a Beckett. Interesting premise. Decent plot. While most authors attempt to wring every ounce of emotion out their narrative I found this too being too "stodgy. " Using 3 or 4 sentences when 1 or 2 would suffice. So it just dips into the so-so catergory for me, although Im sure others would disagree ?

This is a spy book set against the "peace in our time" munich conference. The spy plot is ok, no big twist ala Conclave or The Ghost, but for me the fascinating thing is the feeling of being there. A thrilling snapshot in time to a era when Chamberlain wasnt branded as a cowardly appeaser. Harris it would appear has a grudging admiration for a man out of his time making the best of a bad job and giving us an extra year to prepare for the conflict.

One of Harris's strengths is showing how modern day thinking and trends are in fact seen throughout history, from Cicero to Dreyfuss to Munich. Are we condemned to repeat history ad nauseum?

Much like some other modern day political leaders?

Fake news is nothing new obviously. 😮😢

Totally describes a man's whole persona in one sentence. Very clever writing 🤔👍🏻

Clever similie 😁👍🏻

The pm in this paragraph is Neville Chamberlain immediatly prior to ww2.
Harris depicts the isolation of great responsibility with a simple paragraph. He sets the scene with the first few sentences and then slices to the heart of the matter with the last sentence. A little encapsulation of good writing.🤔👍🏻

Legat (a junior in the Govt just prior to WW2) "This was the information on which government policy would be decided. One might say almost nothing else mattered in comparrison. Diplomacy, morality, law, obligation what did these weigh in the scales against military strength?

The sort of reserved senior colleague he feared might one day unburden himself of confidences one would prefer not to hear

Horrowitz's first instalment in the James Bond cadre. Endorsed by the Fleming family. Set just after Goldfinger (Pussey Galore even puts in a cameo.) This is a typical 007 romp. Set against the glamourous back drop of a car race at Nuburgring. Its full of tension, kooky Koreans and evil Russians. All good stuff

One of the critiscism of James Bond novels is that they too far fetched. Well after finishing this book about car races and rocket launches, I turned on the TV news and President Trump is forming a space army to dominate space and is tearing children from their families and locking them up 10 to cage. If Fleming/Horrowitz had Blofeld doing that it would be laughable. The world is so upside down right now its scary😮

And as for the menu, I didn‘t even get past the swirly writing. It means they can double the prices.‘

he had a sort of magnetism that was hard to define. He was not larger, better-looking or louder than anyone else in the room but he seemed to move in a void of his own making and no matter where he stood he was at the epicentre of everything around him

First Peter Robinson book first inspector Banks book. Plot centres around 2 investigations around teen deaths. One current one in the 60s. Very competently written. I've read quite a few police procedure novels and this is up there. Would like a few more descriptive metaphors but does the nuts and bolts really well. Will probably now start to read the series in order. A pick from me. A solid 7/10 👍🏻

Ooo look what I've got today for fathers day😁. My daughter knows me so well. Right got to finish current book and Trigger Mortis before I get stuck in to this one. Sometimes life just gets in the way of reading 😉

a little drool collecting at the corner of his mouth, one half of his face drooping lower than the other, as if it had melted like a Dalí watch.

‘It‘s hard knowing what to allow and what not to. It‘s hard to know how much discipline to apply. If you don‘t give enough, then the child runs wild, and the parents get the blame. If you keep too strict control, he doesn‘t develop naturally and he blames you for screwing him up

Very dark tale of pyshological profiler with dark mental aspects himself and up and coming female police CID officer tracking down a warped serial killer with sadist tendencies. Nice plot and characters but its USP is the dark obsessive sexual sadism. Later made into TV show "wire in the blood"

For him, politeness was a surgical mask, something he slipped on before he took out his scalpel.

Enjoyed this tale of faux true crime. Horrowitz casts himself as a scribe to a brilliant yet unorthodox consulting detective. Sound familiar? Yes, he is Doctor Watson. The interesting thing is how well he does it. He draws on his real life to set his hero in meetings with real people whom Horowitz does actually interact with. He really does make you think this really happened! Plot is twisty with a few red herrings. Another enjoyable yarn by AH.

An ok book. Enjoyed the ensemble CID unit hunting down the serial killer. Interaction of group was engaging, funny and not too cliche. Problem was that there are more serial killers in this town than normal people! Some eh? what? plot twists which detracted from the overall enjoyment for me. Still a pick (just) from me though.

Cracking multi simaultaneous short stories book, that explores a science gone wild " what if?" Premise. Sort of thing that would fit in a "Black Mirror" Clever twisty plots, writing which squeeze every ounce of drama from the storylines.

Contexy is 10 Downing 1938.
Lovely turn of phrase used here. Describes the sense of doom of the situation and simaultaneously conveys the lack of direction felt by the protagonists. 😮

Follows adventures of a would be monk and nun as they are thrust out into the world and into the bloody visceral chaos of the Wars of the Roses. One of the best historical novels that I have read, especially good in that you get a real immersive, relentless sense of living in that period. Our protagonists have their own dramas and are also swept up in the political intrigue and savage battles of the time.
Up there with Bernard Cornwall.🗡🏹👑📿